This project attempts to explore the developmental biology of the immune response beginning in utero and continuing in neonatal life, childhood, and aging. It also proposes to determine, by immunologic means, whether magnitudes of immune response to selected antigens, in terms of both cellular and humoral immunity, are linked to histocompatibility antigens, and whether certain immunological diseases, some known to be genetically determined and some of unknown causes, are linked to HLA antigens. We also propose to use immunologic means to study the genetic mechanisms operative in genetic diseases of childhood which at the present time are poorly understood, and to attempt to prove that other diseases of unknown causes are genetic in origin. We hope to utilize immunologic means for establishing diagnostic tests for certain diseases in which diagnosis is often difficult until the disease is far advanced. We hope to accumulate data for future analysis to determine a person's genetic predisposition to disease. This information would be stored and could be used when a person enters the hospital to determine if certain symptoms, e.g., nervousness, possibly indicates a disease which is autoimmune. The stored data could easily serve, in the case noted above, as an index that the patient was not suffering from nervousness but from thyroiditis. We also hope to show that aging is due to immunologic mechanisms and perhaps that these mechanisms are genetically determined, thus explaining longevity as a feature common to certain families.